I usually defend gossip and people who talk too much, and I always defended Monica Lewinsky, who I thought got a kind of raw deal in the matter of her affair with the then-president of the United States, Bill Clinton. It was actually a “friend” of Monica's who blew the whistle back in the '90s and Monica herself stayed fairly quiet about it all. She did write a book in 1999, but it did little to refurbish her reputation. Her life has, essentially, been ruined.

So I find rumors that she might now issue a new book — more salacious, more detailed, more bitter— alarming. (President Clinton, whom I can't help but like very much, appears to be indestructible.)

Nobody seems to know if the rumors are true or false. Let's hope they are false. Enough already! On the other hand, it is difficult to countenance why Arnold Schwarzenegger has come out with a horrible tell-all. You know. All about how he had a son with his housekeeper.

But Arnold's self-rush to judgment in print is a fact. In doing it, he has probably lost a chance to reconcile with his wife, Maria Shriver, and to keep the respect of their four children, so shame on you, Arnold.

•

I am getting a kick out of all the Massachusetts “who shall we send to the Senate — Elizabeth Warren or Scott Brown?” contretemps, mostly having to do with Scott's saying Miz Warren claimed she had Native-American blood in order to succeed via “affirmative action.”

She's no Iroquois, sez he!

She says she can't prove it but understood from her Oklahoma forebears that it was true.

Brown doesn't really know whether Warren has any Native-American blood and just because she doesn't “look it” — doesn't mean that she has or hasn't any. We'll likely never know.

For the record, I sent my widow's mite this year to Ms. Warren precisely because she is smarter than almost anybody else running for office.

She is also roundly detested even by many Democrats. She seems to rile everybody up — maybe it's because she is such a brilliant and uncommonly accomplished woman.

I think whatever Elizabeth Warren's faults, we need her in the Senate more than we need the good-looking Scott Brown and his truck.